Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday July 03, 2008 @04:22PM
from the dear-mom-and-pop-send-money dept.

destinyland writes "8.7 million AOL subscribers face a new 20% fee increase next month — unless they agree to never call AOL's technical support lines. They'll have to use AOL chat for support or the online help "portal" unless their issue is a failed connection — and they're being enrolled in the program by default unless they opt out. Ominously, AOL used the exact same wording as when they quietly changed their terms of service to allow them to sell subscribers' home phone numbers to telemarketers. 'Your continued subscription to the AOL service constitutes your acceptance of this change.'"

In addition, it seems to me that AOL is tricking people into accepting this $2 increase. Let me explain:

My wife's grandma uses AOL and she told me that she got an e-mail that said that her bill will go up by $2 every month unless you click this link and answer some account security questions. I immediately thought this was a fake e-mail to get grandmas account information. I looked at the e-mail and it looks just like the false bank emails that I receive all the time. However, I called AOL and it ended being a true e-mail.

We have been trained to ignore e-mails with wording like this, how many old people do you think will just delete this e-mail and end up getting charged an extra $2?

Here in the UK I got a final demand, big red letters and everything, for about Â£12 from N-Power, a electricity supplier. Strangely, I didn't have an account with them. Reading the small print (very carefully) revealed that it was in fact a "final chance" to pay a Â£12 fee and have your power supply *switched* to N-Power. It's a despicable way to operate, and seemingly becoming more common.

I had something along the same lines last week....Some piece of junk mail from a "Dealer Services" in St. Louis trying to look as official as possible, and proclaiming that my 2007 car's 10-year warranty was going to expire if I didn't call RIGHT NOW and sign up for whatever scam service they're peddling.

In addition, it seems to me that AOL is tricking people into accepting this $2 increase. Let me explain:

My wife's grandma uses AOL and she told me that she got an e-mail that said that her bill will go up by $2 every month unless you click this link and answer some account security questions.

Either that of they're tricking people into giving up their right to unlimited technical support. I bet if you do keep the old rate and give up the support they start charging you a $19.95 "per incident" fee or somethin

They bought out Compuserve IIRC, which i'm sure is included in those numbers. In fact, the solution to Vista was to switch to AOL.

AOL has been around a long time. It's been well, a decade since I looked into it, but for number of access numbers they rivaled Compuserve, and compuserve was huge in the 1980s. If you were a world traveler, and needed to access your e-mail, AOL was a legit option.

Or old guys who have free cable and live too far away from any hubs for DSL, like a guy I know. Still, who is surprised? I'm still wondering why the fuck Time Warner merged with them. We all thought AOL was gonna be over soon, and they had to ruin it.

How many slashdotters here are using aol? i challenge you to reveal yourselves.

While I use DSL at home, I pay for AOL service for my mom and dad. They are old and find AOL to be the simplest thing for them to use, and they never do anything that would require them to use anything faster.

I used to keep an AOL account cuz I lived in a college town and that's where all the CO-EDs would hang out. Actually ended up dating 3 of the women I met on there, and married one of them. All of them were crazy, so after the last one I dropped AOL for good.

A regular broadband package here is around $50 a month, and 56K is around $30 a month (most ISPs are trying to get people to move off of 56K).

Okay, so you're not saving that much if you were only using AOL for two houses, but must I remind you that they travel a lot. They'd be spending tons of money if they had to find an Internet provider for 3 weeks in all these countries.

The working poor aren't the way they are because of too little money. But rather, because of too much consumerism. When I look back 20 years ago, the poor kids didn't have Nike. The poor kids didn't have Polo. The poor kids didn't have SHIT. Parents put priorities first.

Now today. Every kid has fancy sneakers, cell phones, laptop computers, new cars for graduation... And bankrupt parents.

It's not the kids I'm worried about. It's the parents. What will the world be like when the parents of t

"Obviously, AOL's software is terrible and causes tons of issues whenever I need to fix their computer. Fortunately, the Mac version is better and doesn't take over the system as much as the Windows version does."

You know, there once was a time when I had no choice but to use AOL because my dad was too stubborn/backwards to change anything. One of the things I hated the most was the client.

Interestingly enough, a few months prior to leaving AOL, I got the chance to use an alternative client they had called "aol dialer" or something like that. It was a minimal client; it connected you and then sat in the tray (that's about all it did). I was super happy with this change, and I think that if your family finds it useful to have AOL service, aoldial is worth a look. All of their content seems to have been moved onto their web portal anyway, and considering that you can check your mail account with IMAP, there appears to be no reason to use their software anymore.

Heh, even if AOL raised their rates to $30/month for dial-up they will still have 8.7 million dial-up users.

As P. T. Barnum used to say "There is a sucker born every minute." and to rephrase that "There is an AOL user born every minute."

The one thing that AOL has going for them, is that even computer illiterate users can use it, just pop in the AOL CD and let Autorun install the software they need. Most computer literate users have moved on to broadband and installed their own NIC card and broadband DSL or

my wife had aohell before we moved in and i addicted her to broadband. at the time they were still charging $2.95 a month for the email address, which we tried fruitlessly to cancel, and they perpetually billed her credit card $2.95 a month for the next few months after which the card expired.

needless to say she received paper bills for about 3 months threatening to cancel her account. they never did and subsequently decided to pass out @aim.com email addresses for free. there really is a bunch of nuts at t

You got modded funny, but it's actually very true. Before my area had ANY broadband, we had AOL. The local dial-up ISP started charging outrageous rates, so we switched out. (This was in early 2000.)

Anyway, after years of promises, we finally got broadband from our local cable company, and I called to cancel our AOL service. I was greeted by what sounded like a computer with an Irish accent. Even funnier was that he would literally sing the last part of every line he would say. "Hello, thank you for calling

To cancel AOL. Call, tell them who you are, say I wish to cancel. They will beg and plead, etc. Say "Cancel my service." then hang up. Then, dispute the charges when they bill you. This is much faster.

My grandmother decided to leave AOL. AOL however, would not leave her. She kept getting billed, and could not disconnect for MONTHS after the fact. I never did find out what the end result was, but (in the past) it was normal for AOL to 'not' disconnect your service when you asked them to...

The best thing to do is to call your credit card company and inform them that AOL is still continuing to bill you after you've already quit their service, and that you want to block any further attempts by AOL to bill your credit card. Unfortunately, for the money you've already paid, you're probably going to have to see a lawyer, and it just isn't worth it, despite the fact that fraudulent billing is actually a pretty serious offense.

Actually, I had a situation where a dating website suddenly billed me almost a year after I had cancelled my subscription. It was probably the yearly premium for highlighting the profile or somesuch (the actual subscription fee was monthly, which had stopped when I cancelled), and since I did not actually have an active account at the time, there was no profile for them to highlight for this premium charge. I told VISA the situation, and they did a chargeback to the company that billed me. I was not require

This is the big difference between using a credit card and a debit card.

With a credit card, VISA isn't giving you your money back. By LAW, you don't have to pay a disputed charge. You don't give them the money in the first place so they can't "give it back".

With a debit card you are unprotected. Your money is gone. IF the bank wants to give it back to you, they can. If they want to run you through the wringer and make you jump hoops, they can. And then they can say you must have authorized the charge for it to happen, and sorry, your account is now overdrawn.

Not enough people realize this difference. A local university is trying to push a combined debit card/id card onto the students and they are telling the students that their debit card will be protected just like a credit card. They're being told that it won't matter if they HAVE to carry the card every day to use Uni resources and happen to lose it, their bank accounts will be safe. Yes, you can safely hand the dweeb behind the library checkout desk your id/debit card to get that reserved item. You can safely hand the work-study student at the gym your debit card/id to check out a basketball.

All those who want the "convenience" of one card for everything will soon learn the inconvenience of dealing with a debit card fraudulent charge. Maybe it's just a way that the uni is teaching; teaching people to mistrust all government.

All those who want the "convenience" of one card for everything will soon learn the inconvenience of dealing with a debit card fraudulent charge

This just isn't true. My debit card was stolen once, and one quick phone call reversed the fraudulent charges.

Before you think that I just got luck with a friendly bank, realize that the Fair Credit Billing Act [ftc.gov] requires banks to refund disputed charges, even on debit cards. The bank then has 90 days to investigate.

With a credit card, VISA isn't giving you your money back. By LAW, you don't have to pay a disputed charge. You don't give them the money in the first place so they can't "give it back".

With a debit card you are unprotected. Your money is gone. IF the bank wants to give it back to you, they can. If they want to run you through the wringer and make you jump hoops, they can. And then they can say you must have authorized the charge for it to happen, and sorry, your account is now overdrawn.

Unfortunately, I think you will find that most banks already use credit cards, and most debit cards are from credit unions. I don't know of a hard-and-fast rule that says this, but it is the impression I get from experience with banks/CUs and the advertising they produce.

Many CUs do offer some form of protection, just not legally-mandated protection and not as convenient or customer-friendly. Many say they will investigate and refund a successfully disputed charge within 72 (or some other number) of hour

The best thing to do is to call your credit card company and inform them that AOL is still continuing to bill you after you've already quit their service, and that you want to block any further attempts by AOL to bill your credit card.

This doesn't actually work, in my experience. They can't permanently block a recurring charge like this. What actually does work is if you tell the credit card company that AOL is being unresonsive, and therefore you want to change your credit card number. This sounds like a

Unfortunately, for the money you've already paid, you're probably going to have to see a lawyer, and it just isn't worth it, despite the fact that fraudulent billing is actually a pretty serious offense

Let's assume AOL is $25/month after taxes and surcharges. 1 year is 12 months * $25 = $300. For 2 yeaars, $600. For 5 years, $1500. All are well within small claims court territory. If she could prove she called to disconnect, such as having received a disconnect confirmation, having phone records, or havin

Seriously. The people who man the faxes aren't paid for customer retention, and certainly aren't going to fax back a note that reads 'R U shure'. Plus, there's the added benefit of having a receipt for the paper trail.

If you don't have a fax machine, you should be able to do it from your local copy shop or anywhere else that offers fax-for-fee services.

That's a common story. My advice? Call your credit card company and tell them your card was lost or stolen. They'll change the account over to a completely different number, and AOL can't charge you anymore. When they call to complain that they can't get their subscription fee, you remind them you cancelled..

Unfortunately, the philosophy of "the customer is always right" went out the door with "congressmen listen to their constituents."

The good corporate citizens started screwing the system at the same time they learned use lobbyists have congressmen look the other way. Legislation made it harder for new companies to compete and the existing corporations said fuck you customers, there is no where else for you to go.

There are still a few good companies out there but they are unfortunately hard to find in this da

Well AOL has lobbyists who pay politicians a lot of money to look the other way on their business practices. basically AOL's business practices are illegal, like refusing to turn off billing for a customer that canceled an account with them and still charging their credit card $24 each month.

But then that is the way our US government works, if a company can afford to hire lobbyists to pay off politicians, they can do whatever they want to the US citizens and get away with it. A lot of stuff gets passed in C

Nostalga is okay but in this case who gives a flying fuck? AOL is irrelevant. They are a internet portal and dialup provider. I'm with the posts that say "hey i didn't know AOL still had users!" but I take it a step further in that I don't want to know either. Back when they had a huge market share they were relevant and their pricing practices deserved scrutiny, even if 99.9% of slashdotters thought it's service was foul. Now they have to compete for the scraps of dialup users who don't want to upgrade to broadband, and that market is neither vibrant nor growing. We don't post pricing practices of Juno or netzero, do we?

What's astonishing to me is the number of AOL users I encounter who continue to use AOL even after switching to broadband, not because they like AOL's features, but because they think that's the only way to the internet.

"You mean I don't have to use AOL to browse the intarwebs? I don't understand!"

I was doing tech support for an ISP back when AOL started its "Bring your own interet" program, where you could use AOL through other providers. I remember getting a call from a woman who complained that "Once I log on and start AOL, all I get is AOL. What do I need you for?"

I explained to her how once she'd opened AOL she was just using us to get to them and that if she wanted all of the Internet, uncensored, unfiiltered, all she had to do was not connect to AOL, just open her browser and have fun. She decided to cancel her service with us.

I've had that happen to me as well at least once. People who have been on AOL for years can't separate AOL from the internet, instead operating under the assumption that their little walled garden is the internet. It's unfortunate, really.

It's interesting that you should use that phrase. Back in the day, I'd explain that if you were using AOL, it was like being in a big building. You could use anything in the building, and there were windows in the walls so that you could see what was outside, but you had to stay inside. With a real ISP, you were out on the streets and could go wherever you felt like and do anything you wanted instead of just what we thought you should do.

I used to do tech support for an ISP who lost a few customers due to AOL, too. It was for a different reason, though.

They had both AOL and us (I don't remember why... probably just testing the waters of a normal ISP as they still had to dial into AOL to use it, if I remember right). Unfortunately, AOL was modifying the tcp stack so that DNS only worked when connected to them. If you uninstalled TCP/IP and reinstalled it, everything would work perfectly while connected to us. That is, until they connected to AOL again, it downloaded a forced update, and that forced updated caused DNS to only work when connected to AOL dial-up. Naturally, the customers then thought our service didn't work right and would stick with AOL.

I thought the first one was a fluke. Unfortunately, this continued to be seen by myself and others there on a regular basis for quite some time.

That was AOL 5, IIRC. Gave us a lot of trouble, too, because even after you'd uninstalled it, you still couldn't resolve DNS. One of our techs finally found a way to fix it: you not only had to remove/reinstall DUN, you had to hand remove a number of the.386 files involved, and make sure that when you reinstalled, you did not keep the newer versions. From what I understand, the AOL techs warned that it wasn't ready for release, but the marketdroids insisted. As I said, AOL is constantly shooting itself in the foot.

Years ago I got the impression that AOL was walking around carrying a pair of hand guns pointing at their own feet. At random intervals, they pull one of the triggers and shoot themselves in the foot. Once in a while, they pull both at once. AFAIC, this new policy is just AOL running true to form and shooting themselves in the feet.

Could I just start sending a company bills? I've changed my terms of service. I'm their customer using their service, but now they must pay be $50 for the privilege of me using their service. That I'm still using their service means that they accept the terms of my customer license agreement and they must now pay my bill otherwise I'll cancel my customer service with them and that'll be a $500 disconnection charge.

I don't have balls enough to try that. I'm sure some else here does. I'd almost want to know w

"That I'm still using their service means that they accept the terms of my customer license agreement"

You would want to change that to:

"Continuing to provide service to my account means that you accept the terms of my customer license agreement"

Remember, it's what THEY do that signifies their acceptance. I don't see why this wouldn't be valid, as long as you are not already in a contract. Of course if you are, THEY can't change the contract either.

Yes.You and AOL are in a contract. Contractual law states that any one party cannot unilaterally change the material terms of the contract without concurrence in writing of ALL parties of the contract.Since AOL does not ask for your permission to change, the contract is void.You can send AOL a bill for breaking terms of the contract plus costs. Sue them in a small-claims court and get your money back.Alternately if they fail to pay you can ask the court declare them bankrupt.

It's amazing how prejudiced the responses have been. Try thinking about it. If AOL charges nothing for tech support, then all of their customers subsidize the ones that require tech support. Should the technically savvy have to subsidize the people that abuse technical support?

Plus this is nothing new. Telephone-based customer service is at the customer's expense in lots of places around the world, because the person making the telephone call pays the bill. So it is typical for an ISP to charge a eur

So they're going to charge you to attempt to cancel your service. It's amazing that they're still even around considering their shady business practices. If you want to know how not to run a business, you always have AOL as your guide.

Of going to a Denny's and getting a Classic Midnight Waitress. Getting that Classic 3 am terrible service. Then at the end being told you HAVE to tip. When you argue they point to a little post-it note on the floorboards near the entrance that says, "Buy eating this food you agree to tip no matter what!"
While the 2$'s may be an enforceable fee, the opt in somehow I think will not withstand a court challenge.

The freakin' article indicates that the $2 increase is only for dial-up customers. It says nothing about broadband AOL users receiving a monthly fee increase. I can't find any clear numbers stating how many of its 8.7 million subscribers are dial-up users vs. broadband customers.

AOL is hardly the only company to do this. Technical support is one of the most expensive parts of an ISP's services, and even companies with sophisticated products can burn many hours of technical support on fairly minor problems that their first-tier and second-tier staff have no chance of understanding, because it's not in the troubleshooting flowchart they use. Someone has to actually understand the problem, or have tried a similar configuration.

VMware does nearly this. Their dial-up and online support is, frankly, useless, and points you to the customer forums. unfortunately, those customer forums are so deluged with similar problems and no way to expire bad answers and get them out of the forum that it's quite difficult to search through and find the real answer.

Funny, I wasn't banned back in the 90s (I was 13 as well funny enough) and I was using IM punters, phishing schemes (yes, actually logging into other peoples accounts), and a few other very bad things. Yet, I was not banned even though they knew all of this, had the account locked for a good whole day, said I was sorry while I got a lecture from their tech support (now I think back and laugh a little about it). What type of "proggie" were you using exactly?

It's an ISP, and for a long time back in the 90's it was a major player. Their software bundled a browser, email client, chat rooms, games, MUDs, and a lot of other features. Unfortunately, they've always been known for annoying marketing techniques (especially their infamous "mail everybody 500,000,000 CDs a week" campaign), their poor customer service, high prices, and -with the advent of broadband- poor speeds, as they're mainly a dialup provider.
They provided some interesting services back in the day,